Hackers’ “Hallelujah,” Photo Says It All, And The Good Sheriff Speaks Out *Open Thread*

My blog was hacked this morning. If you got a post delivered to your in-box with a notice for some link that Oprah suggested, PLEASE do not click on it. I apologize for any inconvenience, and have taken additional steps to ensure the security of this site. Stupid hackers. And speaking of hackers, oh, wow, have they had a lot to say about Hillary Clinton’s claims regarding the security of HER server and how awesome it was. James Rosen had a great report on this very thing at Fox News:

[…] To test that proposition, they took the relatively simple step of examining the source code on the front page of clintonemail.com. This yielded the discovery, sources told Fox News, that the Clintons have not been using the latest version of Microsoft Outlook Web Application (OWA) to send and receive emails. The most recent version of OWA is listed as 14.3.224.2, whereas tests show clintonemail.com to be using the older 14.2.390.1. “[It’s] an indication they’re not keeping up with software upgrades,” one hacker told Fox News. “If I were a bad guy, I’d start looking for any vulnerabilities in that older version they’re using.”

[…]

Perhaps most concerning, private analysts determined that clintonemail.com has been running an older model of Microsoft Internet Information Services, or IIS – specifically version 7.5, which has been documented to leave users exposed on multiple fronts. The website CVEDetails.com, which bills itself as “the ultimate security vulnerability datasource,” is awash with descriptions of serious security vulnerabilities associated with version 7.5, including “memory corruption,” “password disclosure vulnerability,” and the enabling of “remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service.” The cyberlab technician who discovered the Clintons’ use of version 7.5 marveled at “the vulnerabilities the Clintons are ignoring” in an email to Fox News. “This is a big deal and just the thing real-world hackers look for in a target and will exploit to the max,” the source said. “Several of these vulnerabilities have been known since 2010 and yet HRC is running official State comms through it.”

Um, YES – that is a big deal that the Secretary of State of the United States of America was using a server with old software, and KNOWN security problems, for as long as she did. That led to this response from the hackers:

[…] Just the original decision to use a private email account, with Clinton’s own surname embedded in it, has baffled the hacker community. The analyst with experience in the intelligence community, a “white hat” hacker — the kind corporate firms retain to conduct “penetration testing” that exposes businesses’ cybersecurity lapses — told Fox News: “If we learned that the foreign minister of a major foreign country was using her own private server to send and receive emails, and was relying on outdated commercial software to operate and protect it, that’d be a hallelujah moment for us.” (Click here to read the rest of this disturbing piece.)

It has “baffled” many of us that Clinton chose this route, the excuse she used for it (as if setting up a SERVER is easier than adding an EMAIL address), and the risks she has exposed this country to by using a relatively unsecured server for State Department business for FOUR years. But there is also humor to be found in all this as a neighbor of Clinton’s did when he made the following sign (h/t BizPacReview) which appeared in the Daily Surge:

Ahahaha, yeah, I am SURE it does have a “clean hard drive”! I’d say that sums up this whole thing nicely, wouldn’t you? Someone else who sums things up nicely is Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. He was on Megyn Kelly Thursday night discussing the assaults on the police officers there, and particulary Obama’s response to that attack (h/t BizPacReview):

Nothing like someone who puts his life on the line every day calling out the President of the United States and the Attorney General of the Untied States (not to mention Mayor Bill de Blasio of NYC) on their response to the kind of violence police officers are facing thanks to the behavior of these men, and their surrogates, like Al Sharpton. In case you cant watch the video, and I hope you can and do – it is powerful indeed, here is some of what Sheriff Clarke had to say. From BizPacReview:

[…] “He took the lazy way out, he issued a tweet. He didn’t have the decency to put on a suit and go to the East Room or the Rose Garden and issue a heartfelt condemnation of what’s going on in these assaults against officers.” Clarke has been extremely vocal about the kind of damage the administration has done in recent years and the message they’re sending to black communities, particularly the youth. “It’s unfathomable that we’ve gotten this far in the United States, but it was my biggest fear when President Obama and Eric Holder along with Bill de Blasio trashed the reputation of an entire profession.” “The assault on the American cop continues,” he said. Officers are not just dying from direct assaults, either. Statistics show that the number officers who were shot to death in the line of duty rose by 50 percent in 2014 because they are afraid to act as they were trained, Kelly said. Obama’s tweet was not received well on twitter, Kelly pointed out, reading one one tweet that said, “Mike Brown got a speech and 40 DOJ investigators, 2 police officers get a tweet.” (Emphasis mine.)(Click here to read the rest.)

Precisely. And that is the difference. A thug, a criminal, gets the full weight of the United States government on his side, but police officers? Yeah, not so much. In fact, if you listen to what Obama said on Jimmy Kimmel Thursday night, the support was tepid at best. And that is where we are in this country now thanks to those at the very top. Awesome. Just awesome.

To move on to a more personal note, you will notice that this is the Weekend Open Thread. We are heading down to Savannah this weekend to watch our godson, a Keydet at VMI, play in a big Rugby Tournament there this weekend. I’ll check in when I can, and look forward to reading your comments. It’s all yours now – comments, videos, songs, and cartoons are welcome! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Sorry to hear about it..It is sad.
One of my credit cards was hacked into last December. Got an email saying that I had requested an change in information on my card. I knew I hadn’t and then found I could not get into my account on line. What was really weird was while I was on line they tried purchasing a $1500 item at a computer site.
Yes Amy I got my early morning email from you–Too many things were too weird about it. As I said on FB, the time stamp was what gave it away the most. I have never gotten anything from you at 3:30 in the morning.
Hope you get it cleared up.
PS great article.
Did you see this in the papers about the 6 year old boy shot and killed in St Louis.
The Bystanders were more worried about getting a video instead of helping out the child?
It was not until Law Enforcement arrived that anything was done for the child. One of the officers quickly rushed to the SUV, pushing his way through the crowd surrounding the vehicle with their cell phones out videoing the child. The officer picked up the bleeding child and took the child to the hospital in their own cruiser. Did I forget to mention that the child was black and the officer was Caucasian
Is this what our country has come to, that people are more worried about getting a You Tube Video than the life of a someone, even a child? God Bless the brave officers.
Outing at St. Louis park turns to tragedy as bullets fly, killing 6-year-old boyhttp://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/year-old-boy-fatally-shot-in-rolling-st-louis-gunbattle/article_4c0a7015-e591-5c8b-8ec0-9781e2472c30.html

UGH – sorry abt your credit card, Kin. I have had that happen, too. Unbelievably annoying and takes a bunch of time to deal with it (like contacting all the companies that are paid monthly, like phone, etc.). People. Sheesh.

Yeah, the other tip-off from what I saw in the post was that it was something OPRAH recommended. Uh, yeah, no…

Good GRIEF abt the little boy in St. Louis! That is TERRIBLE, Kin! And you are SO right. What in the HELL is wrong with people that they would rather VIDEO the little boy than administer aid?? What have we become, indeed…

I’m not always proud of my hometown. This is a wonderful example of being proud and having a good reason to be. Sometimes we hear so much about “bad” kids we forget about the “great” ones. Bless these kids and may they grow up as well as they’ve started.

By the time the “protesters”, Holder and POS POTUS get done Ferguson will be a ghost town. Anyone with common sense the money to leave will do so. And members of the police force should see the target on their chest and resign and leave ASAP. There is no appreciation for what they do in that place.

Oh, good cartoon, and great comment. I caught a clip of Kevin Jackson from Black Sphere discussing Ferguson. He’s from St. Louis, and said Ferguson is a really, really nice town and this depiction of them is just terrible for the town. It is ruining them.

OHMYGOSH – I just discovered how much WORDPRESS screwed up the formatting of this post! It is fixed now, but wow – don’t know what in the hell is wrong with them (they are trying to get us to switch to a newer format, but it is a HUGE pain, and I dislike it. What happened to my post is precisely why.).

Unfortunately, they seemed to have screwed up some other ones as well, including the formatting on the Palin email post recently. It is fixed now, too, just FYI, so you can see where her quote ended, and my conclusion began.

Thanks, Foxy! It put me into Visual instead of HTML, and that messes up how quotes appear, especially if you ad a link or something. And I hope it showed up correctly before, but the video with Sheriff Clarke is back the way it should be.

On a different note, Legal Insurrection has a great piece abt the number of times Dems met with leaders the Administration would have preferred they didn’t, facts they seem to have forgotten now: https://rabblerouserruminations.wordpress.com/

Every time I think the Democrats can sink no lower, they prove me wrong. This is a prime example. This proves to anyone with a brain that the most important thing to a Democrat is abortion. How sick is that?

Barry is really good at this stuff.
Remember Canada and NAFTA.
Also message to Putin? 👿
____________________________

According to Pajamas Media columnist Michael Ledeen, in 2008, a Democratic senator sent a personal emissary to Tehran encouraging the mullahs not to sign an agreement with the outgoing Bush Administration as negotiations would take on a much friendlier tone following President Bush’s departure from office.

Michael Goodwin nails the Clinton’s and their lack of integrity. I once admired Bill, but his “Lewinsky” sleaze ended that. He was and is still a highly skilled politician – if you find that admirable. She on the other hand is the sleaze without the political skills. Just the power she has gathered over the years from being “Mrs.” Clinton. There are many coat tail hangers in government – some just happen to be wives.

Defending the indefensible Hillary Clinton

By Michael Goodwin

Marking new record lows, only 11 percent of Americans now have confidence in the executive branch and only 5 percent in Congress, according to the General Social Survey conducted by the University of Chicago.

It finds that, by contrast, half of the nation has a great deal of confidence in our military.

Something’s going on here and the Clintons personify the cultural rot. Despite the string of seedy revelations, she’s still her party’s front-runner and her quest ­remains on course.

But if — or, rather, when — other scandals pop up, her helpers ought to recalibrate their strategy.

There is a troll over at NQ extolling the virtues, skills and wonders of Hillary. Probably one of the same ones that excoriated her when Obama was the flavor of the month.

When I disagreed, not politely I might add, the troll, like a typical liberal attacked me as racist and a few other bits of name-calling. That’s all they have. They cannot argue her as a great candidate so they must attack anyone who doesn’t see her as anything but second rate. Sadly that is the mind-set of all too many Americans these days. If you have no facts in your arsenal, throw insults and smears. What petty little people the Democrats have allowed themselves to become.

A lack of ethics, honesty and decency allows them to support Hillary Clinton and make excuses for her behavior. Behavior they would condemn with high dudgeon were it a Republican.

And still the race card is the main card they play. What superficial, little minds they have, huh?

I may write abt abt this tomorrow, but you may have seen the NY Poat article by Ed Klein abt Valerie Jarrett and how she is orchestrating a whole lot of these attacks on Hillary. She and Obama don’t want Hillary in because she might undo some of Obama’s programs. I wouldn’t put it past them, though if Hillary did these things, she isn’t fit anyway. According to BizPacReview.com where I saw an article abt all of this, they are working with O’Malley and Warren as possible challengers.

This doesn’t surprise me at all. Obama, and thus Valerie Jarrett have never gotten over the fact that Bill, being then and now more popular than Obama had to step in and save Obama’s bacon at the 2012 convention.

Obama, and Jarrett, are both petty enough to not only go back on their word to support Hillary but to try to sabotage her too. Her own actions made that so easy for them. I hope the little spat within, between the Obama faction and the Clintonistas tears their party apart.

There is no one who can write a stinging, nasty column better than the dowdy Maureen Dowdy. I seldom read her since I find her and her opinions of no value. However as an indicator of how the left may once again turn on the inevitable Hillary she is a valuable asset. It suggests that while many on the left may be in need of another Clinton in the White House, some, with loud voices and large audiences are not. I had wondered if perhaps Hillary would once again find herself attacked more viciously from the left than from the right. This is perhaps an answer.

If you, Hillary Rodham Clinton, are willing to cite your mother’s funeral to get sympathy for ill-advisedly deleting 30,000 emails, it just makes us want to sigh: O.K., just take it. If you want it that bad, go ahead and be president and leave us in peace. (Or war, if you have your hawkish way.) You’re still idling on the runway, but we’re already jet-lagged. It’s all so drearily familiar that I know we’re only moments away from James Carville writing a column in David Brock’s Media Matters, headlined, “In Private, Hillary’s Really a Hoot.”

This morning, after VMI beat the Army Rangers in rugby, one of the Rangers came over and was talking to the coaches, the players, and the former Commandant of VMI. He told the players that they needed to graduate and join their brothers on the battlefield. He said that most Americans have forgotten that we are still at war, but our lives are still being lost and they need to get out there and help. He just returned three weeks ago. We told him we had not forgotten. He said the media and too many no longer report or think abt it, but they are still there fighting for us…